Gaslit

When I was seventeen, I made out with a boy named Pat. He was a massive gamer geek who lived in a crusty apartment with a bunch of other massive gamer geeks who, as a group, could not bothered to look up from casting spells or killing trolls in their online fantasy world to even grunt a hello at girls like me who occasionally found ourselves at the apartment, against our better judgment, sitting around on crusty couches bored listless in the blue glow of computer screens and Kevin Smith movies. Pat even looked a little like a troll, short and lumpy, though I reassured myself he looked like a young, soft Gold-era Ryan Adams.

Like I imagined Ryan Adams to be, Pat was also kind of a bristly jerk and I steered clear of him until I found out from a friend that he had complimented my ass. At least I think he complimented it. “Pristine,” is what he called it. Flattered, I relayed the information to my best friend, who is smarter than me, and immediately took the wind out of my chaps.

“So, he thinks your ass is…clean? That’s weird.”

“No, he thinks it’s perfect. Like, the platonic ideal of an ass.”

We consulted the dictionary definition. “Pristine: in its original condition; unspoiled.” We checked out the synonyms: “virgin; pure; unused.”

“He’s saying that nobody else has touched it. That’s what he likes.”

“No way. I was wearing my good jeans.”

“Hm. You might be right. You do have a good ass.”

With that settled, I decided to make out with Pat. My self-esteem was on the ground after being recently dumped by my first boyfriend and pining away in unrequited high school love for another boy for over a year, and the news that somebody was paying attention to a part of my body that I had only ever thought of as a liability made previously-invisible Pat blink on like a Lite Brite. Oh look! A distraction! Not a cure for my heartbreak but a mild salve. Something to do.

So, me and my long legs and good jeans and pristine ass made out with lumpy little Pat and, honestly, it was pretty hot, at least as far as this wildly hormonal and underexperienced teenager was concerned. It was fun. I didn’t like Pat, but I definitely wanted to hook up with him again. I told a friend, the one who had passed on the good word about my ass, hoping she might pass my interest back to him.

When she did and got back to me a few days later, Pat’s response floored me: he said it never happened. He denied the whole thing, first to our friends, and later to my face: that we were alone together, that we kissed, that we rolled around in bed together for over an hour.

I was prepared for rejection or disinterest–that was the long and short of the story of my romantic life up to that point. I was prepared to be a little sheepish about the fact that I was interested in this weird dude. I wasn’t expecting to be humiliated. I definitely hadn’t planned on spending the days and weeks to come defending–and ultimately questioning–my own sanity. Did I misinterpret the originating comment about my body? Did I commit some grievous teenage error by talking about our hook-up? Did he not have as much fun as I did, as I thought he was having? Was he not lucky to have me in his bed, to put his hands all over me? Did I make up the entire goddamn thing?

I walked away from that encounter embarrassed, of course, but also a tiny bit unhinged. It makes sense, though.

Eventually the girl who doesn’t believe in herself is going to stop believing herself.

One thought on “Gaslit”

This story made me so sad – for you, for myself and for everyone else out there who has had a similar experience of reality being denied. How easily we lose grip on our own belief in what is happening around us.